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> But some people call it "warm audio." This just reminded me of that comic strip with the hipster collecting vinyl, being asked why. It was the high pric

> But some people call it "warm audio." This just reminded me of that comic strip with the hipster collecting vinyl, being asked why. It was the high price + the inconvenience that attracted me Cover-art is obviously cooler; since it's bigger. But other than that vinyl is such a strange "fashion".

HideousKojima 6y ago
One advantage vinyl has is that it is often mastered better. Music mastered for CDs often has a much lower dynamic range because otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car. The obvious answer for this is to release a different mastering in a digital format, but that's not cool and hipstery enough so instead vinyl made a comeback.
- bjarneh 6y ago
  > but that's not cool and hipstery enough That can be a problem sometimes :-)
- ra 6y ago
  Yes - it's not the format, and certainly not about audio fidelity. Vinyl represents the analog that CDs replaced... it represents a tactical, physical romantic "thing" that has since been superseded.
- mosselman 6y ago
  > otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car. Do you have a source for the claim that CDs are mixed with audibility in cars as a priority? Because, to be honest, it sounds like bullshit, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
  - kasabali 6y ago
    search for "loudness war"
    - fyolnish 6y ago
      The loudness war was not about making music audible over road noise
      - kasabali 6y ago
        I didn't say it was for "road noise". Car stereos was one of the popular places for listening CDs at the height of loudness war. > So the recording and mastering engineers began to produce recordings with limited dynamic range that would sound "better" on iPods and car stereos that are used in areas with more ambient noise than a quiet listening room. [1] > Today, many people listen to music primarily in the car or other noisy places, where louder music cuts through against the background noise. Record companies, especially today, tend to cater to this market of casual, “on-the-go” listeners and make heavy use of compression and limiting in order to make their album louder. [2] [1] https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-and-the-dynamic-range-dr-database---some-observations https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-... [2] https://www.grin.com/document/206816 https://www.grin.com/document/206816
    - abhinav22 6y ago
      That’s unrelated to vinyl vs cds
      - danhor 6y ago
        Not for the reason GP mentioned, but you can increase the loudness much more on CDs than on vinyl, since on vinyl the needle physically jumps out if the loudness is constantly high, so it needs to be mastered with more dynamic range. There is also the thing that the high bitrate/high sampling rate masterings sound much better in that regard, since they target a different audience
      - kasabali 6y ago
        Sure, if you deliberately refuse to interpret the context. Vinyl releases have a different target market and are mastered with more fidelity in mind, while CD releases are mainstream, and have been mastered with small dynamic range for decades because of the loudness war. I'm surprised I had to spell this out explicitly. https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-war/ https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...
  - ericwood 6y ago
    Listening back to mixes over a car stereo system is a pretty common practice, but that's more for making sure a mix translates to common listening scenarios and less to do with road noise.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    I have an in-law who has a Pro Tools setup and does professional mastering, and they absolutely have filters for "what this will sound like in a 2003 Corolla with the stock sound." I don't know how much that kind of thing shapes the actual decision making process, but it's absolutely considered (and it's almost certainly considered all the more for FM/satellite radio broadcasts where in-car listening is expected to be the bulk of the audience). Also relevant is Lars Ulrich's famous quote defending the disastrous state of Death Magnetic, exposed in part because of how much better the tracks sounded in their Guitar Hero versions: "Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. [Producer] Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I’ve heard that there are a few people complaining. But I’ve been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds fuckin’ smokin’."
  - JKCalhoun 6y ago
    Sounds like OP was describing compression. And there has been a trend toward dialing up the compression — but I thought it was to make the tracks "louder", stand out. I had not heard any car connection.
- mattr47 6y ago
  What about when CD first came out? Players were first made for the home, and while the first CD player for automobiles was introduced in 1984, it was not until mid to late 90s that they became mainstream.
- timw4mail 6y ago
  Ironic, too, given CDs have a larger dynamic range than records.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Hence the "Turn me up!" campaign, though it's hard to say how much of a difference it has made.
Alex3917 6y ago
> But other than that vinyl is such a strange "fashion". The problem is that a lot of music that was originally recorded on vinyl was either never remastered for modern audio equipment, or else has been remastered in a way that makes it even worse than the original version. E.g. a lot of the early Beatles stuff is pretty painful to listen to using even just basic earbuds, and I can only imagine that it would be even worse using good headphones. And I say this as someone who isn't an audiophile, owns no vinyl, and isn't even especially into music.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
klingon78 6y ago
Cassettes have good bass and midrange. Vinyl is great and more defined. CDs have too much treble and anything digital can’t really produce the same waveforms exactly.
- hluska 6y ago
  Pure analogue recording studios are in the minority and by the time you expand your search to pressing plants, the vast majority of vinyl has been digital before it hits our ears. (I belong to the vinyl cult too and badly want to believe what you’re saying.)
  - klingon78 6y ago
    What I said was true. Whether it was digital or not can be a subtle difference. I never said that vinyl is only analog or that that is the reason for the difference in sound between vinyl and other formats, because it’s not. The “warmth” is cassettes and more so with better balance in vinyl is known. Digital didn’t kill music quality; it did affect waveforms, but that’s not the reason for vinyl sounding better to most. Of course, there are many more reasons that music sounds better or worse.
    - hluska 6y ago
      I wonder if we’re really getting into mechanical differences between turntables? It’s hard to talk in terms of sound but you sound like a lot of fun. If you’re ever in or around Regina, Canada let me know. I have two Technics 1200s that I’ve modified heavily. If you’d like, I can show you some cool stuff with three tonearms (the stock 1200 tonearm, a straight tonearm that will tell you precisely when I went to raves and a tonearm that is engineered for better sound. You’ll hear the difference right away. Then I can show you some differences between cartridges, proper cartridge alignment (a fraction of a degree makes a huge difference) and even styluses. One downside of the proliferation of turntables is that most don’t work with shit. It’s been happening since everyone was a DJ and is still happening now!!! :)
- sramsay 6y ago
leokennis 6y ago
For those looking for the comic: https://i.imgur.com/Pt0Ze2s.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Pt0Ze2s.jpg
- bjarneh 6y ago
  Thanks; I didn't remember it correctly I see :-)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hluska 6y ago
(This is purely anecdata.) I love music so pay a lot of attention to stuff like speakers. One thing I notice is that when people get into vinyl, they get into the overall experience of listening to music. They spend a little more on speakers, align them with music in mind and start sitting down and listening to music. Digital is so easy that it’s background noise when we’re driving, working and living. Vinyl takes more work and in my experience, that work leads to an enhanced experience. It’s not surprising people call it ‘warm’.
- ghaff 6y ago
  For a lot of people (including myself), digital has essentially become radio. Most of the time I just listen to playlists of various sorts and, mostly, not even ones I've curated myself. I haven't done any meaningful rating and curating of my music lists in years.
  - hluska 6y ago
    This is a great comment! At risk of dating myself, I remember a brief period between CDs and CD players in cars being commonplace. At the time, mixtapes were an entire art. Crap, the hours I put into mixing and curating tapes?? Those were the days...
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Also anecdotal: After switching my entire collection over to CD, one of the bands I later got into, only as a "CD band" were The Muffs (R.I.P., Kim). Years later, seeing their albums that I loved so much released on vinyl, I thought, why not? The instant I put the needle down I knew there was magic in vinyl that I had traded for convenience years ago. It sounded that much better. The significance for me was that this was a band I knew digitally before I ever heard analog. Somehow, going that direction, and enjoying the vinyl better convinced me there was something there. Explain away. I am happy when I put on my records.
  - ratww 6y ago
    Mastering on Vinyl is almost always less compressed, and sounds more natural due to natural limitations of the medium. This sounds especially better (IMO) when you turn up the volume. Of course, it's entirely possible to master like that on CD, MP3, etc but nobody does it.
the_local_host 6y ago
I suspect that for people who like vinyl, the experience of music isn't just about the sound. Putting on a record, as a ceremony, just seems more appealing than menu-diving down to a playlist on your phone.
- uberdru 6y ago
  It's true. An LP defines a concrete slice of time, defined by decisions made by the artists and the producers. That work and craft is different from the playlist creator. Also, the management of a record collection takes attention and patience. A record collection itself is a type of identity repo, a lot like Walter Benjamin's library, e.g. I will argue that CD's cannot capture a certain plangent timbre, though I've never found any research to back that up (hard as I have tried).
- cromka 6y ago
  Agreed, and I'd say it is exactly the same phenomenon as when people prefer print books over e-readers.
  - stjohnswarts 6y ago
    Nice sized print paper backs have a much better resolution then kindle and the like. That's why I prefer it. I used my kindle for trips because of the size to amount of content ratio. When I'm at home I prefer a well printed book it has much higher resolution of text and is easier on my eyes if I'm going to be reading for a while.
- augusto-moura 6y ago
  Yes, a similar converging discussion is physical vs digital media games, with enough time both storage and internet connections will reach a point where digital will be light years more practical than physical discs (or cartridges, anyone remember those?), but the feeling of having a hard copy and all the ceremonies involved about playing a game gives a so much richer experience for me. Is just like prepping popcorn and getting comfy for a movie session at home, you can always just play a movie at your laptop, but sometimes you just want to get 100% into it
vharuck 6y ago
I can understand it from a "wabi sabi" point of view, where the imperfections are part of the appeal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
slicktux 6y ago
Cringe worthy scenario is when someone plays vinyl for the “warm sound” but uses Bluetooth speakers...hence digitizing the sound with an ADC
- catblast01 6y ago
  Why? Bluetooth isn’t perfect but it the fidelity is not so poor as to reverse the “warmth” of the analog distortion, and even a cheap ADC won’t either... it should reproduce it pretty well. What people get wrapped up in cognitive dissonance is that they equate “pleasing” with hi fidelity... but anything likeable about vinyl is because it is low fidelity — but if you tell certain people this they take it as a pretty personal attack. Anyway, a decent digital signal chain should reproduce this low fidelity pretty well including high bitrate SBC.
  - slicktux 6y ago
    I agree with your statement; to give my initial comment some context I was poking fun at the ‘audiophiles’ that prefer vinyl for its analog characteristics but then unknowingly digitize it by using, for example, a Bluetooth speaker... I’m in no way an audiophile and if I want quality sound than WAV or FLAC is fine...but that’s just for certain albums ;)
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Oh, kids, I play through a tube amplifier I built myself, then full-range speakers (also built myself). (Sub is solid state - oof.)
dang 6y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26410982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26410982.

HideousKojima 6y ago

One advantage vinyl has is that it is often mastered better. Music mastered for CDs often has a much lower dynamic range because otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car. The obvious answer for this is to release a different mastering in a digital format, but that's not cool and hipstery enough so instead vinyl made a comeback.

bjarneh 6y ago
> but that's not cool and hipstery enough That can be a problem sometimes :-)
ra 6y ago
Yes - it's not the format, and certainly not about audio fidelity. Vinyl represents the analog that CDs replaced... it represents a tactical, physical romantic "thing" that has since been superseded.
mosselman 6y ago
> otherwise it would be impossible to listen to over the sound of the road etc. in a car. Do you have a source for the claim that CDs are mixed with audibility in cars as a priority? Because, to be honest, it sounds like bullshit, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
- kasabali 6y ago
  search for "loudness war"
  - fyolnish 6y ago
    The loudness war was not about making music audible over road noise
    - kasabali 6y ago
      I didn't say it was for "road noise". Car stereos was one of the popular places for listening CDs at the height of loudness war. > So the recording and mastering engineers began to produce recordings with limited dynamic range that would sound "better" on iPods and car stereos that are used in areas with more ambient noise than a quiet listening room. [1] > Today, many people listen to music primarily in the car or other noisy places, where louder music cuts through against the background noise. Record companies, especially today, tend to cater to this market of casual, “on-the-go” listeners and make heavy use of compression and limiting in order to make their album louder. [2] [1] https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-and-the-dynamic-range-dr-database---some-observations https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-... [2] https://www.grin.com/document/206816 https://www.grin.com/document/206816
  - abhinav22 6y ago
    That’s unrelated to vinyl vs cds
    - danhor 6y ago
      Not for the reason GP mentioned, but you can increase the loudness much more on CDs than on vinyl, since on vinyl the needle physically jumps out if the loudness is constantly high, so it needs to be mastered with more dynamic range. There is also the thing that the high bitrate/high sampling rate masterings sound much better in that regard, since they target a different audience
    - kasabali 6y ago
      Sure, if you deliberately refuse to interpret the context. Vinyl releases have a different target market and are mastered with more fidelity in mind, while CD releases are mainstream, and have been mastered with small dynamic range for decades because of the loudness war. I'm surprised I had to spell this out explicitly. https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-war/ https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...
- ericwood 6y ago
  Listening back to mixes over a car stereo system is a pretty common practice, but that's more for making sure a mix translates to common listening scenarios and less to do with road noise.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  I have an in-law who has a Pro Tools setup and does professional mastering, and they absolutely have filters for "what this will sound like in a 2003 Corolla with the stock sound." I don't know how much that kind of thing shapes the actual decision making process, but it's absolutely considered (and it's almost certainly considered all the more for FM/satellite radio broadcasts where in-car listening is expected to be the bulk of the audience). Also relevant is Lars Ulrich's famous quote defending the disastrous state of Death Magnetic, exposed in part because of how much better the tracks sounded in their Guitar Hero versions: "Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. [Producer] Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I’ve heard that there are a few people complaining. But I’ve been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds fuckin’ smokin’."
- JKCalhoun 6y ago
  Sounds like OP was describing compression. And there has been a trend toward dialing up the compression — but I thought it was to make the tracks "louder", stand out. I had not heard any car connection.
mattr47 6y ago
What about when CD first came out? Players were first made for the home, and while the first CD player for automobiles was introduced in 1984, it was not until mid to late 90s that they became mainstream.
timw4mail 6y ago
Ironic, too, given CDs have a larger dynamic range than records.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Hence the "Turn me up!" campaign, though it's hard to say how much of a difference it has made.

Alex3917 6y ago

> But other than that vinyl is such a strange "fashion". The problem is that a lot of music that was originally recorded on vinyl was either never remastered for modern audio equipment, or else has been remastered in a way that makes it even worse than the original version. E.g. a lot of the early Beatles stuff is pretty painful to listen to using even just basic earbuds, and I can only imagine that it would be even worse using good headphones. And I say this as someone who isn't an audiophile, owns no vinyl, and isn't even especially into music.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

klingon78 6y ago

Cassettes have good bass and midrange. Vinyl is great and more defined. CDs have too much treble and anything digital can’t really produce the same waveforms exactly.

hluska 6y ago
Pure analogue recording studios are in the minority and by the time you expand your search to pressing plants, the vast majority of vinyl has been digital before it hits our ears. (I belong to the vinyl cult too and badly want to believe what you’re saying.)
- klingon78 6y ago
  What I said was true. Whether it was digital or not can be a subtle difference. I never said that vinyl is only analog or that that is the reason for the difference in sound between vinyl and other formats, because it’s not. The “warmth” is cassettes and more so with better balance in vinyl is known. Digital didn’t kill music quality; it did affect waveforms, but that’s not the reason for vinyl sounding better to most. Of course, there are many more reasons that music sounds better or worse.
  - hluska 6y ago
    I wonder if we’re really getting into mechanical differences between turntables? It’s hard to talk in terms of sound but you sound like a lot of fun. If you’re ever in or around Regina, Canada let me know. I have two Technics 1200s that I’ve modified heavily. If you’d like, I can show you some cool stuff with three tonearms (the stock 1200 tonearm, a straight tonearm that will tell you precisely when I went to raves and a tonearm that is engineered for better sound. You’ll hear the difference right away. Then I can show you some differences between cartridges, proper cartridge alignment (a fraction of a degree makes a huge difference) and even styluses. One downside of the proliferation of turntables is that most don’t work with shit. It’s been happening since everyone was a DJ and is still happening now!!! :)
sramsay 6y ago

leokennis 6y ago

For those looking for the comic: https://i.imgur.com/Pt0Ze2s.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Pt0Ze2s.jpg

bjarneh 6y ago
Thanks; I didn't remember it correctly I see :-)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hluska 6y ago

(This is purely anecdata.) I love music so pay a lot of attention to stuff like speakers. One thing I notice is that when people get into vinyl, they get into the overall experience of listening to music. They spend a little more on speakers, align them with music in mind and start sitting down and listening to music. Digital is so easy that it’s background noise when we’re driving, working and living. Vinyl takes more work and in my experience, that work leads to an enhanced experience. It’s not surprising people call it ‘warm’.

ghaff 6y ago
For a lot of people (including myself), digital has essentially become radio. Most of the time I just listen to playlists of various sorts and, mostly, not even ones I've curated myself. I haven't done any meaningful rating and curating of my music lists in years.
- hluska 6y ago
  This is a great comment! At risk of dating myself, I remember a brief period between CDs and CD players in cars being commonplace. At the time, mixtapes were an entire art. Crap, the hours I put into mixing and curating tapes?? Those were the days...
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Also anecdotal: After switching my entire collection over to CD, one of the bands I later got into, only as a "CD band" were The Muffs (R.I.P., Kim). Years later, seeing their albums that I loved so much released on vinyl, I thought, why not? The instant I put the needle down I knew there was magic in vinyl that I had traded for convenience years ago. It sounded that much better. The significance for me was that this was a band I knew digitally before I ever heard analog. Somehow, going that direction, and enjoying the vinyl better convinced me there was something there. Explain away. I am happy when I put on my records.
- ratww 6y ago
  Mastering on Vinyl is almost always less compressed, and sounds more natural due to natural limitations of the medium. This sounds especially better (IMO) when you turn up the volume. Of course, it's entirely possible to master like that on CD, MP3, etc but nobody does it.

the_local_host 6y ago

I suspect that for people who like vinyl, the experience of music isn't just about the sound. Putting on a record, as a ceremony, just seems more appealing than menu-diving down to a playlist on your phone.

uberdru 6y ago
It's true. An LP defines a concrete slice of time, defined by decisions made by the artists and the producers. That work and craft is different from the playlist creator. Also, the management of a record collection takes attention and patience. A record collection itself is a type of identity repo, a lot like Walter Benjamin's library, e.g. I will argue that CD's cannot capture a certain plangent timbre, though I've never found any research to back that up (hard as I have tried).
cromka 6y ago
Agreed, and I'd say it is exactly the same phenomenon as when people prefer print books over e-readers.
- stjohnswarts 6y ago
  Nice sized print paper backs have a much better resolution then kindle and the like. That's why I prefer it. I used my kindle for trips because of the size to amount of content ratio. When I'm at home I prefer a well printed book it has much higher resolution of text and is easier on my eyes if I'm going to be reading for a while.
augusto-moura 6y ago
Yes, a similar converging discussion is physical vs digital media games, with enough time both storage and internet connections will reach a point where digital will be light years more practical than physical discs (or cartridges, anyone remember those?), but the feeling of having a hard copy and all the ceremonies involved about playing a game gives a so much richer experience for me. Is just like prepping popcorn and getting comfy for a movie session at home, you can always just play a movie at your laptop, but sometimes you just want to get 100% into it

vharuck 6y ago

I can understand it from a "wabi sabi" point of view, where the imperfections are part of the appeal. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi

slicktux 6y ago

Cringe worthy scenario is when someone plays vinyl for the “warm sound” but uses Bluetooth speakers...hence digitizing the sound with an ADC

catblast01 6y ago
Why? Bluetooth isn’t perfect but it the fidelity is not so poor as to reverse the “warmth” of the analog distortion, and even a cheap ADC won’t either... it should reproduce it pretty well. What people get wrapped up in cognitive dissonance is that they equate “pleasing” with hi fidelity... but anything likeable about vinyl is because it is low fidelity — but if you tell certain people this they take it as a pretty personal attack. Anyway, a decent digital signal chain should reproduce this low fidelity pretty well including high bitrate SBC.
- slicktux 6y ago
  I agree with your statement; to give my initial comment some context I was poking fun at the ‘audiophiles’ that prefer vinyl for its analog characteristics but then unknowingly digitize it by using, for example, a Bluetooth speaker... I’m in no way an audiophile and if I want quality sound than WAV or FLAC is fine...but that’s just for certain albums ;)
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Oh, kids, I play through a tube amplifier I built myself, then full-range speakers (also built myself). (Sub is solid state - oof.)

dang 6y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26410982 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26410982.